A TODDLER is inadvertently left in a hot car and dies from heatstroke. Public outcry ensues and suggestions are made to prevent such occurrences.
As a policy researcher, I look at the structural constraint within which families function when such a tragedy occurs. It is the breaking point of a system that consistently undervalues our most finite economic resource: time.
Across Malaysia, parents of younger children navigate challenges like long commutes, shift work and rigid schedules. In this daily scenario, essential care work such as cooking, cleaning and nurturing is squeezed into the remaining fragments of the day.
Experts attribute forgotten baby syndrome (FBS) to a cognitive lapse. Chronic stress and sleep deprivation create a state of “tunnelling” where the brain becomes so hyper-focused on an immediate scarcity, like a deadline at work, that it literally tunnels out life-critical peripheral information such as a child sleeping in the back of the car.
Reviews of Malaysian cases similarly noted that many such incidents stem from unintended forgetting.
On the same spectrum, scarcity of time may fuel care constraints and amplify children’s developmental challenges such as childhood stunting.
Malaysia’s stunting rate increased to nearly 24% in 2024, an unusually high figure for our level of economic development.
While most studies centre on nutrition, sanitation and income, daily caregiving tasks like preparing meals and attending healthcare appointments require more than just financial resources. They also require time and cognitive headspace.
Among families earning above RM5,000 monthly, stunting still stands at 17.4%, nearly three times the 6.9% benchmark for upper middle-income countries.
Current economic metrics treat time as invisible. While GDP captures market output, it ignores the strain on households that sustain that output.
Labour statistics tell us who is working but not the intensity of the unpaid care work occurring alongside formal employment.
For families with young children, especially aged below seven, the demand for care rises sharply, marking the life stage with the highest “time poverty”, according to a study by Khazanah Research Institute.
When this surge in demand for care intersects with long commuting hours, need for dual incomes and limited options for affordable childcare, many households might start buckling.
Trade-offs emerge, like postponing clinic visits, oversimplifying meals or unintentionally bypassing a daycare drop-off.
To support families, we must recognise time as a core economic resource. This begins with measurement. The government should institutionalise the regular collection of time-use data to reflect the economic value of unpaid care. Such data could also reveal “hidden” forms of deprivation that poverty-by-income statistics alone fail to detect.
It is not enough to say a household is above the poverty line because it earns RM3,600 if the cost is four hours of commuting and 10 hours of work. Such a schedule leaves almost no time to plan a nutritious meal or sustain a breastfeeding routine.
Measuring the value of time would also allow policymakers to observe how unpaid care hours vary across life stages, occupation groups and regions. It would reveal whether parents of young children are absorbing hours of unpaid labour alongside full-time employment and whether commuting patterns are intensifying that burden.
Mapping peaks in demand for care, such as during early childhood, would also allow the government to design targeted temporary flexibility in working arrangements based on life-cycle realities.
Treating time as a formal economic resource shifts the question from how families cope under pressure to how institutions structure that pressure in the first place.
This article first appeared in The Star on 4 March 2026.
